A Treasury of Virtues: Sayings, Sermons, and Teachings of 'Ali, with the One Hundred Proverbs attributed to al-Jahiz

A Note on the Text

xxv A Note on the Text I. Al-Quḍāʿī, Dustūr maʿālim al-ḥikam Manuscripts I am aware of four extant manuscripts of the Dustūr: a thirteenth-century Sunni Egyptian manuscript in the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin; a second, nearly identical Turkish manuscript from the early twentieth century in a private collection in Baghdad which I could not locate; a third Zaydī Yemeni manuscript from the seventeenth century at Yale University’s Beinecke Library; and a fourth Ṭayyibī Indian manuscript from the seventeenth century in the collections of the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London. There is also a Twelver Shiite Iraqi manuscript from the thirteenth century of the Munājāt ʿAlī, which is the bulk of the text of the Dustūr’s chapter on prayer, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. [ ‫م‬ ] Egyptian manuscript (611/1214), Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, catalog number 3026.46 This manuscript was copied in 611/1214 in Cairo, Egypt, by the judge ʿIzz al-Quḍāh Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Abī l-Fatḥ Manṣūr ibn Khalīfah ibn Minhāl, from a manuscript endorsed with the signature of the Zaydī sharīf and Egyptian preacher and judge Fakhr al-Dawlah Abū l-Futūḥ Nāṣir ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Ismāʿīl al-Ḥusaynī (d. 563/1168). The latter transmitted the book, having studied it with the grammarian Muḥammad ibn Barakāt ibn Hilāl al-Saʿīdī, (or al-Saʿdī, (d. 525/1131), who himself studied the book with its compiler, al-Quḍāʿī (d. 454/1062). The manuscript has a distinguished pedigree. It bears the certificates of authorization to transmit from three of its master narrators, all judges (reproduced on pp. 6–8 in the al-ʿAẓm edition), and appears to have been used and collated by several important scholars. In addition to the xxvi A Note on the Text illustrious chain of transmitters listed above, the audition colophon on the last page states that the copyist, the judge ʿIzz al-Quḍāh, read the text with the judge Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad, son of the judge Raḍī alDawlah Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad al-ʿĀmirī, who had studied the book with the above mentioned Zaydī sharīf, Fakhr al-Dawlah. The manuscript is complete and written in clear naskh script with full vocalization. with a few exceptions, it transcribes the hamzah. It has 127 folios and several corrections in the margins. [ ‫ي‬ � �] Yemeni manuscript (1079/1668), Yale University’s Beinecke Library, New Haven, Conneticut, catalog number Landberg 471. This manuscript was copied or patronized in 1079/1668 by a Zaydī jurist named Badr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar al-Unsī. In the Beinecke microform, the Dustūr is sandwiched between two Zaydī works.47 It has 72 folios. The manuscript is complete and written in fair naskh script, in red and black ink, with vocalization of letters provided in a few places, and several corrections in the margins. Despite its later provenance than the Egyptian manuscript, the script is more archaic: it is only partially dotted , has no hamzah, and uses ‫و‬ instead of ‫ا‬ in words such as ‫ي‬ �‫يو‬ ��‫ح‬ �. [‫�ہ‬] Indian manuscript, (eleventh/seventeenth century), Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, catalog number 190. The folio following the title page contains an ascription of the book’s contents to ʿAlī, beginning “min kalām amīr al-muḥsinīn wa-amīr almu ʾminīn . . .” followed by a full page of laudatory epithets of ʿAlī in Arabic with some Persian-Gujarati vocabulary. The manuscript is complete and written in clear and handsome naskh script, in red and black ink, with several corrections and lexical explanations on the margins, and spare vocalization. It has 88 folios, some water-stained. The final folio with the copyist’s name and date of transcription is missing, but transcribed on the title page below the title in a different hand is the name Miyān Chānd ibn Miyān Abūjī and (probably a different version of the same name) Miyān Shaykh ibn Miyān Abūjī Chāndjī: Chānd ibn Abūjī (if this is the same Chānd) was one of the three people who, during the reign of the Ṭayyibī Dāʾūdī dāʿī, Sayyidnā Fīr Khān Shujāʿ al-Dīn (r. 1056–65/1646–55, Ahmedabad), broke off to found the Hujūmiyyah sect, later becoming their second dāʿī. Presumably the [52.14.150.55...